


Last Night I Dreamt I Died Alone

by Lumakiri



Category: Linked Universe - Fandom, The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Linked Universe, Sad Times With Legend, Stars is writing shit to the Wombats again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:08:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24463276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lumakiri/pseuds/Lumakiri
Summary: Legend wakes up from a nightmare, but it isn't his usual one.Inspired by/set to Last Night I Dreamt... by The Wombats
Relationships: Legend (Linked Universe)/Marin (Legend of Zelda), Link/Marin (Legend of Zelda)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 69





	Last Night I Dreamt I Died Alone

_ Last night I dreamt I died alone _

_ Through all my talk of self-defeat _

_ A fearful bomb ticks underneath _

_ Last night I dreamt I died alone _

_ From now on I'll curb the cynical speaking _

_ Seems that dream has sent the biggest chill through me _

Legend awoke with a jolt, breathing heavily. Beads of sweat rolled down his brow and a dry tongue fruitlessly licked drier lips. Sharp, cool spring air filled his lungs and chilled the perspiration on his skin, and he exhaled softly. He was in camp. Glancing about, he quietly tallied up the sleeping forms in his head. Everyone was here, except the smith, who sat at his watch post by the fire. Thankfully, he had not noticed Legend awaken, and the veteran forced himself to lean back quietly against the log to avoid suspicion. 

Dreams were the last thing he wanted to speak to anyone about.

This wasn’t his usual, though.

Legend was used to dreams that made his pulse quicken and soul ache. He was used to waking up to his own fevered ramblings, thick with sweat. They were familiar, almost comforting, a sadness of his own that he knew better than the back of his hand. The cold March wind that swept through him as he awoke was not the warm, exotic breeze that shook the palm fronds. No heavy scent of hibiscus and spice, with a laugh like bubbling seafoam. He hadn’t tasted the sea salt of her lips, crossed soft valleys of sunblessed skin… Usually, he’d shake himself free of such unbidden thoughts, but now Legend sunk into them, clinging to his pretense as if it were a crib blanket.

No, it hadn’t been that dream tonight.

His gaze fell on the sleeping boy a foot to his left, messy brunette locks teased into curls on his cheeks. Hyrule’s sleep was deep, and dreamless, the soft rise and fall of his chest his only movement. Legend was grateful for that. He dared not close his eyes, lest that terrible image come back to him.  
_ “You were my hero,”  
_ _ “We believed in you,”  
_ _ “You don’t deserve to fight alongside us,”  
_ His mind disagreed, conjuring back the suffocating, scathing hatred of his brothers. It was only a dream, he told himself fruitlessly, heart thumping in his tightening chest. How could he honestly expect himself to believe that? How could dreams just be dreams, when she was one that had left such a hunger in him he might never be sated?

There he went, trying to avoid facing his nightmare by smothering it in sordid daydreams of a girl that wasn’t real.

If only she was.

He had lashed out at them all, for their reprimands and accusations he lacked compassion. They questioned his worthiness. He remembered the barbs of his tongue, the hurtful, jaded spite that was his trademark. Angry words had spilled from him like an evil bile in his belly. Legend recalled the nauseating satisfaction that swirled in his throat as he stared about their wounded, angry countenances. Wasn’t that what he had wanted? To make them feel the pain that he did? But he couldn’t shake how Hyrule’s doe-like eyes darkened with malice and he inhaled sharply to try and make the image go away. It didn’t.

And then he was alone.

The years drew around his cottage in a heavy curtain of twilight, and gathered under his eyes. They sank into the lines of his face and faded the colour from his hair. All around him, time settled across his home as the thick dust on his uncle’s bed and the unopened letters from Zelda by his door. It seeped into his bones to seize them and his senses to dull them. The poison words he’d spit before now burned his tongue, unspoken, and he felt himself choking on his own hatred. Legend writhed in agony as his body was aflame, every nerve ending burning, numbing, falling to ash. He screamed, and screamed, but nobody came. His uncle he had failed long ago, his Princess had stopped reaching out to his radio silence, and his brothers… he had torn down and driven away with his rage.

Legend had never been afraid of death before, but as he lay there in his empty house, with its vacant beds and blank pictograph frames, he realised he’d instead been afraid of life. Life, and those who lived in it. He would die alone, and his body would lie alone, in this stone tomb of a home once filled with love. He’d wither away and nobody would ever know he was gone. As he forced his eyes shut with pain, his last thought was that maybe she would be there to welcome him again. He murmured her name as the darkness overtook him, but his plea went unanswered. There was no seafoam and hibiscus.

Even she had left him in death.

He had never been so glad to wake up. He closed his eyes, just for a moment, to make sure he could open them again. Another deep intake of air, and finally his heart beat began to slow. He hadn’t had a nightmare that wasn’t  _ that island _ since he was a small boy, and back then they were of fantastic monsters and under-bed-beasts. He’d run to his uncle’s bed, bury himself under the heavy blanket, and seek refuge in his embrace. Legend examined his palms to reassure himself they weren’t withered with age just yet, and sighed. He had seen far more monstrous beings than those of his childhood night terrors. After all, he was one of them. He swept his gaze once more across the camp and his slumbering companions. The argument in his nightmare wasn’t real,  _ but it could have been. _

It could still be.   


Why was he like this? He’d once worn his vitriol as his armor, replacing his fear and sorrow with anger. Fears were weaknesses to be exploited, emotions weapons to be turned against him. If he ignored the guilt and the pain, the island that haunted him, he wouldn’t have to make peace with the horrible crimes he had committed in the name of the gods. And so he kept building his walls higher, the walls he’d made after he failed his uncle, after he failed Marin. If he let no one else in, he was safe. He couldn’t lose what he did not have. He couldn’t regret that which he’d never known.

He realized how wrong he was when they first visited Malon, when he saw the life the old man had built for himself. Legend hadn’t thought of what he wanted from the future, but he looked at their stolen kisses and easy familiarity and found himself imagining he and Marin in their places. What kind of home would they make for themselves? What kind of family would they have? The force with which the realization he’d never have any of that hit him so violently he’d fallen to his knees. He grieved the loss of a life shared with her. A life of sunshine and song and salted lips. 

Tears, unwanted and forced into silence, slid down his jawline and gathered in the crook of his neck. He lowered himself back down onto his bedroll and fixed his eyes on the dark canopy of trees above, willing the sobs in his throat to die away before they broke into the night. Love, for Legend, had been an abstract concept enjoyed by others that he had no time for. To him it had been a practical affair of marriage and child-rearing, that felt a lifetime away to a seventeen year old boy. Marin had taught him love. From the moment he woke up at her side, he had been captivated. She glowed like the sky, hair the colour of an ocean sunset and the voice of a goddess. Nobody else had made his words stutter and die on his tongue, or his cheeks flush red and breath hitch. She’d caught his stuck words in a kiss and Legend was forever, inextricably hers. 

There could never be anyone else.

And a life he couldn’t share with her was a life better spent alone.

_ Someone once said I don't have any feelings _

_ Well, I think that emotions can be misleading _

_ And thinking back _

_ I might have nailed the coffin shut with that _


End file.
